


the smaller odysseys

by skuls



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe, Episode: s08e15 DeadAlive, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-24 02:24:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18562021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skuls/pseuds/skuls
Summary: Mulder comes home.(Prompt -- ways you said I love you:  11. With a shuddering gasp)





	the smaller odysseys

Three months after they buried him, Skinner pulls Agent Mulder out of the ground. Doggett is skeptical from the beginning, but he’s not too surprised when they find out Mulder is alive. He should be, but he’s not. He’s seen some pretty weird shit in his time on the X-Files, and this may take the cake, but he’s experienced a resurrection of his own in that time. He’s thinking less of the reasons that Mulder might be alive, and more of how Agent Scully is going to react when she finds out. She’s been in grief for months, teary and quiet, teetering on the edge of something. It’s been clear for a while that her relationship with Mulder goes a whole lot deeper than a simple partnership, and he knows that her loss has left a gaping hole in her life—hell, if anyone can understand that, it’s him. He’s had plenty of loss in his life. She’ll be so happy if this means she can have him back… but what’s going to happen if this is all a fluke, and it’s not really him or he doesn’t make it?

When Skinner walks away from the opened coffin, muttering something about telling Scully, Doggett grabs him by the arm. “You can’t do that to her,” he says. “Not til we know he’s okay. If we tell her he’s alive and he doesn’t make it… it’ll be like she’s losing him all over again.”

—

Against all odds, Mulder lives. Between threats to Scully’s baby in exchange for Mulder’s health and whatever the hell is going on with Billy Miles, Mulder survives. Skinner pulls his life support, and that ends up being exactly what he needs. The doctors reassure Skinner and Doggett that he is going to live.

Skinner presses Doggett, again, to call Scully, but he still refuses. “Wait til he’s awake,” he says, “til we know everything is okay.”

Skinner glares at him searingly, in that Stern Father way Doggett suspects he uses on Mulder and Scully often. “I know them,” he growls. “She’ll want to know, she’ll want to be there when he wakes up. She’ll be furious if she finds out we didn’t tell her.”

“How is she gonna feel if there’s something wrong?” Doggett demands. “We’re doing this for her, for both of them. We can’t mess it up.” He’s thinking of his boy, of how he would feel if he thought he could get him back and then it all fell apart. Losing him once was hard enough; he cannot imagine losing him again.

Skinner looks as if he’s in immense, immense disagreement. He kind of looks like he wants to sock Doggett right in the face. But Doggett won’t let up. Finally he lets go of the phone. Sighs heavily and tells him  _fine_. He’ll stay with Mulder in the meantime.

—

Mulder can’t remember much. He remembers the light, the circle of abductees in the woods, and then awakening in the hospital. He remembers nothing else. Nothing but flashes of darkness and pain and his voice rasping as he screamed Scully’s name. He isn’t sure he wants to remember.

When he wakes up, he initially thinks that he is alone. He is stiff and numb, his mind foggy, his limbs limp. His hands are lying at his sides. He thinks he is alone—which he finds a little confusing; he hasn’t woken up alone in a hospital bed since 1993—but then he turns his head and finds Skinner slumped in a chair next to the bed, his eyes mostly closed. He scans the rest of the room, turning his head as best as he can, but Scully is not there.

Some sort of instinctual worry bubbles up in him, and he rasps, “ _Skinner_.”

Skinner stirs, sitting straight up in the chair, lifting his glasses to rub at his eyes as he blinks. “Mulder,” he says softly, sounding exhausted, “Jesus Christ. How did you feel?”

Mulder licks his cracked lips, clears his throat. “What happened?” he rasps.

Panic washes over Skinner’s face briefly before he composes himself. “You… you were abducted,” he says carefully. “In Oregon. Do you remember?”

“Yes.” He doesn’t want to talk too much, it hurts to talk, but he has to know, he has to know why she isn’t here. She’s always been here before. Is she okay, is she hurt? Did they take her too? “Where’s Scully?” he says, with effort. It’s only after the words come out that he realizes that she might’ve not wanted to be here.

Skinner’s face falls a little further. “She's… she’s coming, okay?” he replies. “She’s going to come, Mulder. She’s going to be so happy to see you.”

Mulder shuts his eyes. He doesn’t want to analyze it, the fact that she isn’t here. “Is she okay,” he whispers.  

“She's—” Skinner falters again. “She’s just fine, Mulder. I swear.”

He doesn’t believe him, and he doesn’t know why, but he just wants to see Scully. He misses her so much. But he doesn’t have the energy to argue. He’s so tired. He’s drifting off when he hears Skinner say, “Let me get your doctor.”

—

The next time he wakes up, it is with considerably more energy. He is able to sit up in bed, to get up and walk around the room. He searches for a phone and finds none. There is no one in the room, no one coming to check on him. He sits on the edge of the bed, defeated.

There are scars he doesn’t remember getting on his hands and face, and he has no idea how long he’s been gone. It could’ve been months, or years; Skinner didn’t look that much older, but that doesn’t mean that a long period of time hasn’t passed. He keeps coming back to the fact that Scully isn’t here. Why wouldn’t they call Scully, his emergency contact? Did she take her name off of the form? Has she given up on him, taken him for dead? He doesn’t think she would do that, but he is having trouble rationalizing why she is not here.

He keeps coming back to the moment when Skinner said she was fine, she’d be coming here, and he didn’t believe him. He doesn’t know why he didn’t, but he didn’t. He doesn’t. And he wants to see her. All he wants is to see her.

He decides to leave the hospital at that moment. In a split second. He sneaks into the hospital lockers and steals some clothes, a shirt and pants that are too big on him, and a fifty from someone’s wallet. He finds out on the curb, from the cab driver, that he is in Annapolis.

He rattles off Scully’s address without a second thought and prays that she still lives there.

—

By the time he gets to Scully’s house, he’s figured out how long he’s been gone. Six months. Six months of his life, missing. It hits him so hard he has trouble breathing for a moment. Six months lost with Scully, six months they’ll never get back. In the moment, Mulder can’t remember why he ever wanted to go to Oregon. Every sound of his feet on the stairs feels like a condemnation. When he knocks on the door, the pause that follows feels like a sentencing.

He hears footsteps on the other side, and the door unlocks. It swings open to reveal Scully on the other side, dressed in pajamas and visibly pregnant. She has a polite smile on her face, and then it melts away, replaced by shock as she pales rapidly. A hand presses over her stomach. Her mouth opens but nothing comes out.

His heart is thudding too hard in his chest. He can’t breathe. He whispers, airlessly, “Scully?”

She is breathing too rapidly, as if she is hyperventilating. Her lips form her name, but no sound comes out. Shakily, she steps closer, reaching out for him. Her hands tremble. She touches his face, first, with trembling fingers, and then slides her hands down to the back of his neck. He knows what he is searching for, and he stands still and lets her do it, tears pricking the back of his eyes. When she doesn’t find it, she steps back, her eyes wide as saucers. “Mulder?” she chokes out.

He nods.

Her lower lip trembles. She practically launches herself at him, landing in his arms, throwing her arms around him. She’s clutching him so tight that her nails are practically piercing his skin. She bursts into tears, shaking in his embrace as she sobs. She’s whispering his name over and over again, her hands clutching at his stolen shirt. Speechless, all he can do is hold her tight, to rock her back and forth gently.

“I thought I’d never see you again,” she gasps, pulling back to look at him, to touch his face. He wipes her tears from her cheeks. “How are you  _here_?” she breathes.

“I think Skinner found me. I woke up in the hospital.”

“Jesus.” She hugs him again, so tight that he loses his breath for a second. She’s crying again, her shoulders quivering. “This doesn’t feel real,” she chokes out, gripping his shirt with one hand. “I’ve prayed for this so many times, Mulder…”

“I’m here,” he whispers. He doesn’t understand how—he wants to ask what happened to him, because he’s guessing that it’s a bit more extensive than a simple abduction—but he’s here. He strokes her hair gently. “Scully…?”

She seizes his face in her hands and kisses him hard, her eyes red, her lips salty. She kisses his face, his cheeks, his forehead with a relieved sort of fervor. “I love you,” she gasps, her voice trembling, and he shuts his eyes, bites back a sob. “I love you so much, Mulder… I thought I’d lost you. I thought I would never see you again.”

—

Eventually, they make it inside. Scully won’t let go of him. She grips his hand in hers and sits beside him on the couch, her thigh pressed to his as she calls Skinner. She sounds furious as she talks to him, furious that she wasn’t told that he was alive, and this is when Mulder understands: he was dead. He was dead and buried, and somehow he’s alive again. And this is why his fish tank is sitting on her kitchen counter, and she is wearing one of his sweaters over her pajamas. He has no idea when she had gotten pregnant—he knows he has been gone for two months, but he has no way to gauge how far along she is—and he doesn’t want to ask. Scully is clutching at his hand tightly as she snaps at Skinner on the phone. She sounds like she is going to cry all over again.

Eventually, she hangs up the phone, lets it fall onto the coffee table with a  _thunk_  and looks over at him with something almost like embarrassment. Her eyes are still brimming with tears. “Are you okay?” she whispers. “How do you feel?”

“A little tired,” he says unsteadily. He’s having a little bit of trouble processing it, all of it.

“Skinner told me you weren’t exactly discharged through the normal channels.” She smiles at him shakily, letting go of his hand to feel his forehead, to push his hair away from his face.

He shakes his head, and the corners of his mouth upturn a bit. “Have you ever known me to go through the proper channels, Scully?” he teases, but his heart isn’t into it; it comes out flat. He looks down at his lap, at the swell of her belly under his sweater. “I wanted to find you,” he admits, his voice soft and a little ashamed.

“Mulder, I’m so sorry,” she says in a rush. “I would’ve been there if they’d told me, I swear. I… I’ve been waiting for news like this for months, and I'd… given up hope…” Her voice breaks. “All I wanted was to have you back,” she whispers, “and I thought I’d never have that again.” She keeps one hand on his face and presses the other over her stomach. “The baby… I thought I’d never get to tell you about it,’ she whispers.

His head shoots up at that, his eyes widening, and she nods, teary and happy all at once somehow. She finds his hand and brings it to her stomach, to the small movements there, and he feels like crying all over again. “Oh my god,” he whispers. She nods, her chin trembling. “Oh my god,” he repeats, faltering, and he wraps his arms around her this time, holding her as tight as he can, and they’re quivering together on the couch, clinging to each other and rocking back and forth as they dissolve into sobs.

—

“I’m so glad,” Scully whispers, hours later, when they’ve gone to the doctor and talked to an extremely apologetic Skinner, when they’re curled up in bed together, her hand curled hard around the hem of his shirt. She still hasn’t let go of him. “I’m so glad you’re okay, Mulder. I was so scared…” She sniffles. “I… I thought I’d lost you forever, and yet here you are.”

“I think sooner or later we’re going to run out of luck,” he mutters, and she chuckles, digging her fingernails hard into his arm. She lifts her head and kisses him before tucking her head into the crook of his neck, wrapping herself around him. Between them, the baby kicks. He kisses her head several times, squeezing her tight. He holds onto her and doesn’t let go; she is here, and he is here, and he is alive, and even though the fact that he was dead and buried just a few days ago scares him half to death, in more ways than he can imagine, he is still here. He’s survived, and he is back with her, and they are somehow having a baby. He came back home.


End file.
